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ACLU to feds: Your "hacking presents a unique threat to individual privacy"
The American Civil Liberties Union, along with Privacy International, a similar organization based in the United Kingdom, have now sued 11 federal agencies, demanding records about how those agencies engage in what is often called "lawful hacking."
The activist groups filed Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and nine others. None responded in a substantive way.
"Law enforcement use of hacking presents a unique threat to individual privacy," the ACLU argues in its lawsuit, which was filed Friday in federal court in New York state.
"Hacking can be used to obtain volumes of personal information about individuals that would never previously have been available to law enforcement."
[...] The FBI did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crafoo on Monday December 24 2018, @04:35PM (2 children)
In the government's case, if the do it without a real warrant it's a violation of the 4th amendment. Our amendments are rights that were believed to be so self-evident that even writing them down should not be necessary. All rights originate and are reserved for USA citizens except for those specifically enumerated and given to our government (so they can take care of things for us, take out the trash, guard the borders, etc). So writing them all down is silly, but there were a few that were so important that many people thought it would be wise to at least write them down and describe them. #1 - #4 are pretty god damned important. The fact that our government regularly violates #4, is doing a corporate end-run on #1, and engages in regularly psy-ops to undermine #2 says a lot about the state of things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @06:27PM
yes. they are Enemies of The People.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @10:24PM
Given that there is no real way to prove data forensics on a digital medium (that doesn't involve analog analysis of the media, which only works/worked on real hard discs of certain vintages.) It is entirely possible that their hacking plants the evidence they claim to expose with no way to refute or prove it. This is even worse than normal forged evidence because people thing computers are 'black and white' and 'if it is on a computer, it must have been put there by the owner of the computer' without understanding just how easy it is for a third party to plant false evidence without leaving a visible trail, even backdating timestamps is relatively easy on all but the most modern filesystems, and those have their own unique problems which can make verifying the chain of evidence difficult.
Data forensics is fine as a method of RECOVERING data from corrupt or damaged disks, but it is really a misnomer to consider it in the same field as actual forensics based on evidence gathered in the field and trying to provide biometric proof of handling, which digital data obviously doesn't have, and even if it did, could be easily forged using algorithmic processes.